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U.S. to Specify Documents Needed for Driver's Licenses

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 - The intelligence agency overhaul given final approval on Wednesday by the Senate also reorganizes the way the states grant driver's licenses, a change that civil liberties advocates and some security experts say could have far-reaching consequences.

Issuing driver's licenses has always been mostly a state function, but the new law requires the federal Department of Homeland Security to issue regulations on what documentation a state must require before it can grant a license. It also requires that the licenses be "machine readable," which will probably be accomplished through a magnetic stripe or a bar code or both.

The printed format of the piece of plastic will still be under state control. But to a person equipped with a reader, that will make little difference, because Washington will set the minimum national requirements for the machine-readable data.

The federal government will gain control through airport checkpoints and other places where federal agencies demand identification. After a phase-in period, the government will refuse to accept licenses that do not comply with the standard. The same rules will apply to photo identification issued by states to nondrivers.

"We're really looking at a national ID system," said James C. Plummer Jr., a policy analyst at Consumer Alert. "Basically, each state might have the name of the state written in a different font on the front, but there will be a magnetic stripe on the back containing virtually identical information."

The new law requires digital photographs, meaning that the photos will be easily maintained in linked databases, he added.

Some motor vehicle administrators say national standards are needed. Until July 1, for example, Vermont issued licenses with no photographs. Now, new licenses in Vermont have photos, but people with old ones can still renew them without photos.

At the American Civil Liberties Union, Greg Nojeim, associate director of the Washington legislative office, said, "Licenses that purport to meet the federal standard will become the gold standard."

But Mr. Nojeim and others say they may not be nearly as secure as some people assume, because the "source documents," including birth certificates and Social Security numbers, are so easily faked.

"It's a garbage-in, garbage-out situation," he said.

"The same people who manufacture fake driver's licenses today will be manufacturing fake national driver's licenses tomorrow," Mr. Nojeim said, although the price will increase, he predicted.

Some security advocates also complained that the requirements on source documents were not strong enough. Representative Candice S. Miller, a Republican who is a former secretary of state of Michigan, where she oversaw driver's licenses, was the author of the House language.

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She said that she believed the rules on sources might not be strong enough and that she would introduce legislation in the new Congress to standardize the process further, a spokesman said.

There are millions more Social Security numbers in circulation than there are living people eligible to hold them, according to experts, and birth certificates for fraudulent purposes, which do not have photos or other biometric identifiers, are freely available in some states.

Mr. Nojeim of the A.C.L.U. said making the licenses machine readable in a common format would allow any commercial entity that asks to see a license -- ostensibly to back up the validity of a check or a credit card, for example -- to be conveniently privy to a variety of information about the person.

Most licenses are already machine readable, but the formats differ, along with the stored information.

The language in the bill, which now goes to President Bush for his signature, is a compromise. The House version would have let the federal government set the eligibility requirements for licenses, but the Senate refused to go along. Under the compromise, individual states can still decide "what categories of individuals are eligible to obtain a driver's license or personal identification card." That means that the states that issue licenses to people without demanding proof of legal status in the United States can continue to do so.

The final bill does not satisfy all lawmakers. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, promised new bills that would provide "real driver's license reform." Among the changes, Mr. Sensenbrenner said, would be to require that when a license is issued to a person who is in the country legally for a limited time, the license expires when the visa does.

When asked about whether there should be a single national standard under which states issue driver's licenses, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said, "We need to consult closely with the states."

At the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, Jason King, a spokesman, said that the solution was "better training for examiners at the front counter, so they know how to spot a counterfeit document."

The association sees a simpler benefit in stronger license rules, an improvement in highway safety. Of the 43,000 people killed on American roads in an average year, Mr. King said, about a fifth, or 8,600, die in crashes involving a driver who is "improperly licensed." In many of those cases, he said, a driver had a license revoked in one state and crossed a state line to obtain another fraudulently.

In addition to that problem, the states do not all trade information with one another about moving violations, so that a driver who goes far from home and runs red lights or speeds may not be endangering his or her license.